‘Pete’s Dragon’ Posters Tease a Bashful Dragon in Disney’s Remake

The first official teaser for Disney’s remake of Pete’s Dragon arrives on Sunday evening, but you can catch a glimpse of the friendly new dragon with a new poster and motion poster for the upcoming film. You can’t see the big green guy’s face, but these posters do give us a sense of where Disney and director David Lowery are heading with their reimagining of the 1977 fantasy classic.

The titular dragon hides behind a tree in the new posters, but you can see that Lowery eschewed the classic cartoon animation for contemporary CGI. That said, the CGI doesn’t have that uncanny, photorealistic quality that makes some CG-heavy films so difficult to tolerate. The key here is making sure that the dragon doesn’t look real, and although you can only see a portion of him in the posters, it definitely looks like they’ve embraced that concept.

Pete’s Dragon is the latest in Disney’s growing line of live-action remakes of classic properties, and like the original, this one centers on a young boy named Pete and his best friend Elliott, who happens to be a dragon — and may or may not be imaginary. The remake stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Robert Redford, Wes Bentley and Karl Urban. Here’s the full poster:

Disney

Lowery is one of many directors plucked from the indie system and given a big studio job. Like Colin Trevorrow before him (and Alex Ross Perry, who’s scripting Disney’s new Winnie the Pooh), Lowery also directed an acclaimed indie (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) that caught the attention of a major studio.

Pete’s Dragon will debut its first trailer on Sunday night during ABC’s Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60 special.